Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: We marched on almost fainting with the heat, till nearly set of sun, without halting, when we arrived at the encampment of the Pasha; it was on our side [i. e. the west side] of the Nile, which here runs in its natural direction from south to north. At five or six days march below it, it turns to the left and describes, from above its turning point and Dongola, a track something resembling the following figure— which is the reason why, in coming up the river from Dongola, we found it running from the northeast. The length of this curious bend in the river Nile, never known to the civilized world before the expedition of Ismael Pasha, may be about two hundred and fifty miles; the greater part of it all rocks and rapids. The journey from our last encampment on the third cataract to the country of the Berbers, following the direction of the river, takes eight days of forced marches, but that by the desert, i. e. across the peninsula formed by the course of the river between the country of the Berbers and our last encampment, takes four days forced march. The road from the place where we arrived at the river (in coming from the desert) up the country of Berber, lies generally on the edge of the desert, and outside of the fertile land lying between the river and the desert; of consequence we were rarely led to its banks so as to ascertain its course and appearance. But from several points where the road approaches the river, I observed that it winded continually, and contained many beautiful islands, some of them, particularly that named "Sibne," cultivated like gardens. I also observed that the river, at the lower extremity of the country of the Berbers, is much interrupted by rocks, and I have learned, since my arrival, that between the third cataract and the camp, the wa...